words by Lara Tokar, rated 3 stars
Elif Batuman's The Idiot follows a young Turkish-American woman, Selin, during her first year at Harvard University in the 90s. Selin is an aloof, somewhat unremarkable character, often letting things – life – happen to her rather than come from her. The novel is written in a truly refreshing format, with no chapters, going from moment to moment. It pays close attention to the classes Selin takes, delving deeply into the content she is learning, making the reader feel as though they are learning along with her. It also invites the reader to meet the colourful characters she encounters, from her erratic but heart-warmingly loving friend Svetlana to Ralph, her picturesque friend from high school who is evidently destined to become a politician. The novel is warmed by its constellation of idiosyncratic, strange characters and plenty of inside jokes, sometimes on them and sometimes shared with them.
With the ultimate goal of becoming a writer, Selin takes classes on linguistics and philosophy of language. She also attends an advanced Russian class that meets every day and a particularly strange class, taught by an artist, called “Constructing Worlds,” for whose final project she paints her bedroom pink. All of this might be part of the novel’s autobiographical element, considering that Elif Batuman too was a Turkish-American woman attending Harvard in the 90s. Selin’s interest in language allows for some fascinating commentary, tackling the differences between English, Turkish, Russian, and Hungarian and reflecting on how people communicating in their second-languages think, among others. I am generally partial to media that places its audience in an academic coterie. The Idiot does this very well, and with the strength of its setting, the imposter syndrome of its narrator also feels very real. She is getting an elite education, clearly pondering on and retaining the knowledge she is exposed to, but still feeling inadequate and ignorant. She feels as though she is not actually learning anything meaningful, struggling with knowing how to interact with others and how to function in the world. It is actually an incredible premise – the battle of a clearly intelligent woman at an elite institution with what it really means to be intelligent, academic, and the elite. For the first third of the novel, I was very drawn in, thinking I might have found a new favourite book, thinking ‘what a fantastic commentary on education!’ and underlining so much of it.
Selin’s character is perfect for the sort of commentary the novel offers. In this chapterless, stream of consciousness style novel, the reader is inside Selin’s head and gets to enjoy her grapple with intelligence firsthand. There is not much about Selin’s personality itself and she is often surprised by how others know what they want in life. Even when it comes to hobbies like scuba diving, she wonders at how anyone could know that’s what they want to do. People around her are often anxious but Selin rarely is. She handles everything very nonchalantally, with no thought process laid out as to why she does anything. There is essentially nothing in the novel on how she got into Harvard, so it is easy to forget that she would have been a very hard-working student in her younger years to get there. She constantly lets people in her life take the lead as if she had no control or agency. Even Svetlana, who ends up being her best friend, only really becomes so by Svetlana’s own insistence rather than Selin’s desires.
Despite the promising avenues that the novel offers, the conversation about academia and intelligence are shattered in the second third of the book with the entrance of Ivan, a tall Hungarian man with an incredibly bland personality and a generally rude demeanor who Selin somehow becomes absolutely enthralled with. The first time Selin takes agency in the novel is when she sends an email to him, which she does almost in a trance, almost as if it's out of her control. To some extent, Ivan’s existence makes sense in the plot. Some romance is unavoidable in a text depicting university experience – nor is Selin’s reaction to him that surprising. A woman unfulfilled with her education and confused about her own intelligence meets someone cruelly sure of himself, and she is infatuated, it adds up.
Still, it is difficult to understand how or why a full third of the book completely revolves around this character. The wonderful questions about intelligence, about imposter syndrome, and about academia are replaced by boring, time and time repeated tirades of ‘does he like me?’ or ‘why doesn’t he like me?’. The real cherry on top is that Ivan already has a relationship the entire time he strings Selin along. Selin knows this, and never thinks twice about this woman’s existence. I struggled to make sense of how a novel can take such a downturn, have such a high start and fall so flat. In the moments that revolve around Ivan, there are still some questions of intelligence and language, but the focus is on how Ivan and Selin speak different languages as people and cannot communicate. There are so many excruciating instances where Selin makes a point or a joke that Ivan does not understand or hear and asks her to explain or repeat, killing the moment. His character similarly kills the flame of the entire novel consistently.
The final third of the novel involves Selin going to Hungary to teach English, a task she takes on because it was recommended by Ivan with the thought that she would be close to him. There she meets some more hilarious and eccentric characters. From Margit and her husband, who has a collection of bullets and guns and animal skins, to Juli and Bernadett who are absurdly hit with rocks by the neighbouring boys whenever they go outside, and the funniest of them all, Rózsa, the blunt yet somewhat astute trainee English teacher who repeatedly tells Selin she doesn’t “split hairs,” the distinctive characters Selin encounters almost restore the spirit of the novel. Almost, but not completely – it is still tainted with Ivan. Everyone Selin meets in Hungary consistently asks her about Ivan and she is consistently debating whether to call him or not. It all eventually culminates in a heart-to-heart at his house where he tells her he enjoyed his power over her.
Overall, The Idiot is a novel of incredible promise. It is written really well, in an original way that you will miss when you pick up another novel after it. It has so much light and life. However, the way it suddenly begins to revolve around an irritating character with truly nothing to offer to the protagonist or the plot takes this promise and turns it into a tiresome read. Perhaps Selin’s disillusionment with Ivan, and his effect on her psyche, is no different than her disillusionment with education, but it is very disappointing as a reader to start experiencing what feels like a fascinating thought exercise about intelligence and have that turn into a toxic romance where a capable woman pines after a mediocre man who is leading her on. Well, disappointing, but not unheard of. A woman’s journey in academia being interrupted and undermined by the presence of an unexceptional man is nothing we haven’t seen before.
--
Lara Tokar holds a BA in English Literature from the University of Warwick and an M.Phil. from Trinity College Dublin. A lifelong reader, she likes to read, annotate, and discuss literature spanning many centuries, genres, and styles. When not reading and writing, she spends her spare time attending concerts and theatre events, following popular culture news, and going on active adventures.